Today marks the end of Autumn Term One, what a wonderful half-term it has been! Looking at the faces of the children and their friends and family in the assembly on Thursday captured many of the achievements from the first eight weeks: learning, confidence, independence, pride and the all the character education values that were celebrated. A huge thank you to our parents, GVPA staff, GVPA Governors and most importantly the children, for everything this half-term.
Our attendance has increased to meet our target of 96%. We are very proud of this achievement.
Wishing you all a great half-term break; we look forward welcoming you back in school on Monday 3rd November.
Reception Maple
Reception Maple have successfully completed their first half-term at school. We are so proud of every child. Well done Reception Maple.
Miss Matthews and Mrs Guild have the following learning to share with you:
Drawing Club
Last week in Drawing Club, we read a book called 'Somebody Swallowed Stanley'. Using the word ‘recycle’, we have learnt why it is important to ensure that we look after our environment properly. We drew Stanley the bag and used out imagination to plan what we would recycle him into if he was our own plastic bag.
Drawing Club
This week, linking to our learning about number three, we read the text Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Using the vocabulary ‘perfect’, the children have drawn maps to help the Bears find Goldilocks, and they have drawn where she may be hiding.
Mathematics
In Mathematics, we have enjoyed learning all about numbers 1, 2 and 3! We have learnt how to subitise, and we’ve really enjoyed the subitising game on the iPads! This week, we have looked at the composition of 3. The children loved using the double-sided counters to explore how they could make 3! We’ve also been practicing careful counting and number formation within 10.
Understanding and Knowledge of the World
Reception Maple have had lots of fun learning all about the festival of Diwali this week. The children have enjoyed listening to the story ‘Dipal’s Diwali’ and have learnt different ways that families celebrate Diwali. In the provision, we have been creating our own rangoli patterns, mehndi designs and we’ve crafted diya lamps out of paper plates. We even went up to the special practical room on Monday to create our own diya/candle pots out of clay! It was very messy, but we had lots of fun.
Year One Rowan
Year One Rowan are simply incredible - they are incredible learners, they are incredible role-models to the younger children and are every day, demonstrate the Character Virtues. Mrs Stamp would like to share the following news with you:
Literacy Tree
In Literacy, we have been learning all about how to use capital letters and full stops accurately. We are now experts at understanding that we need to use subjects and verbs within our sentences and can identify them within our sentences too. We have rewritten the story of 'Cave Baby' and some of us even included some exclamation marks. Mrs Stamp and Miss Roger's couldn't be prouder of all of the children's beautiful stories.
Science
In Science, we finished off our unit on the human body and we completed an experiment all about our sense of smell. The children had different containers and couldn't see what was inside. They had to use their sense of smell and guess what they thought it was. Our favourite was the toothpaste and the vanilla!
We have also been learning all about Autumn in Science and how things change in this season. We took this as an opportunity to explore our character virtue of co-operating and worked together to create stunning pieces of artwork. The children worked in teams of six or seven and used recycled materials to create an autumn tree. Mrs Stamp and Miss Rogers are so proud of the children because of their teamwork and how well they communicated together.
Mathematics
In Maths, the children have continued to explore the relationship between addition and subtraction using their knowledge of part- whole models. They can now write fact families in eight different ways! We have also been created subtraction number stories and then representing them as number sentences.
Thank you for your support and particiation at the Year One Mathematics Workshop. We hope that you found the information shared useful.
Black History Month
October is Black History Month, in Rowan class the children listened to the story of 'Rosa Parks' and how brave she was to stand up for equality. The children wrote sentences about the importance of Rosa Parks, and they said she had so much courage to do what she did.
Geography
We have now completed our unit of learning - What is it like here? The final challenge for the unit was to re-design a new playground for the school and explain our reasons why. We were highly aspirational so took our inital ideas to Mrs Burke. For some reason, Mrs Burke said, "unfortunatley no" to the hot tub request so we went back to our teams and re-designed and explained our reasoning for some playground improvements.
Physical Education
In PE, we have been working since the start of term on dance inspired by the 'Jungle Book'. Last week, we performed our final dance to the song 'I wanna be like you' in a lindyhop style. We have been mirroring our partners, jumping, kicking and twisting our way through the song. We came up with our own routines in small groups or partners and performed them in front of the class - they were brilliant!
Pen Pal Letters - Glascote Primary Academy
We were also extremely excited to receive some letters of our pen pals at Glascote Academy. We can't wait to write back to them after half-term.
Thank you, Mrs Fielding and Year 1 at Glascote Academy!
Whole School Personal Development
Positive Behaviour Rewards
The Character Virtues that we have been developing in school over the last two weeks are 'courage' and 'kindess'.
During the October Friends and Family Celebration Assembly, it was a privilege to award every Reception and Year One child with a reward.
Parent Lunch
Thank you to our parents who joined our Parent and Family Lunch. Thank you to Pip for cooking the extra dinners!
We hope that you enjoyed your dining experience and it also gave you an insight into how independent our children are.
New Lunchtime Menu
In Autumn Term Two, a new four-weekly menu is going to start. For the week commencing 4th November, please can you look at week 2 for the menu.
After speaking to the children and listening to the feedback from our families, the Fierte Trust have produced a new themed menu. Each day will be based around the following themes:
Monday – American
Tuesday – Italian
Wednesday – Best of British
Thursday – World Cuisine
Friday – Fish Friday
There will still be three options for each day: meat, vegetarian and jacket potato.
An email will be sent to parents with more information about this.
Parking before and after school
Parking before and afterschool continues to be coureteous and respectful for the school neighbours - thank you.
It is positive to see so many children walking, scootering and biking to school. A HUGE thank you to the children and parents who are supporting walking bikes and scooters when on the school grounds.
As a polite request, please can the children also walk their bikes and scooters to the front gate after school too. This is simply to prevent any accidents for both the children and adults collecting. We thank you in advance for your support with this.
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Governor Vacancy
We have one vancancy for a new Governor to join GVPA. If you are interested, please contact the school office on: office@gardenvillage.fierte.org.
Fierte Multi-Academy Trust
As we are all aware from the news, the need to support Climate Change and become a more sustainable school is essential for the furture of our planet and generations to come.
This week, Mrs Burke attended a meeting with other senior leaders from across the Fierte Multi-Academy Trust as part of the Climate & Suststainablity action group. In the weeks to come, there will be more information about how as a school we can contribute to educate the children and reduce our carbon emissions.
The children and staff at Garden Village Primary Academy had a great day learning about numbers. The children played dominoes, played lots of counting games and even baked their own domino shortbread biscuits!
Garden Village
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